Dear Friend:

In response to the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and in conjunction with the Jan/Feb 2023 group exhibition, ROE 2.0, Woman Made Gallery is asking for your voice by sharing your abortion story. This is an on-going project and there is no entry due date. We'll exhibit the stories as they come in, and we feature them on WMG's website.  

We know that there are dozens of reasons why abortions are necessary and it is never a decision taken lightly.

“It was the right decision for me and for the children I already gave birth to.” “I was not ready to be a mother.” “I got my life back.” “It allowed me to complete my education.” “I was able to leave my bad relationship.” “It secured my future.” “It saved my life.” “It was medically and mentally necessary.” “I did not want to be pregnant.”

Whatever the reasons, the most outrageous part of all of this, is that half of the population has been told that they no longer have rights over their own body and that they are now 2nd class citizens.

When I had my abortion, I could not be more unprepared. I was using contraception. yet I accidentally became pregnant. I had no job and I had just been admitted to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to receive my Master’s degree which made a tremendous difference in my life and my career, receiving the credentials necessary to teach.

There are a thousand stories. I had pretty much forgotten mine, pushed it aside. When it was over, I moved on, taught college Art, exhibited my work, and promoted other Women artists.

Even if you have not had an abortion, you know someone who has. You may have driven them to the appointment. You may remember the feelings of that day and many years afterward.

We are soliciting those personal stories now not to exceed more than 500 words. You may sign your name or stay anonymous. With your permission, your story together with others is shared on WMG’s Website.

You have a choice to sign your name, or to be anonymous and your identity will be omitted. There is no entry fee to submit your story. By clicking the checkbox in this application, you accept and agree to the Acknowledgment and Grant of Permission. If you do not agree to the Acknowledgment and Grant of Permission, you should not submit your experience to Woman Made for the Online Project: My Abortion: My Choice. 

Regards, Marcia Grubb

Lifetime WMG Member | Past President of Woman Made Gallery

Keywords:  Roe v. Wade, Reproductive Rights, Pro-Choice, Feminism, Feminist, My Body, My Choice, Planned Parenthood, Abortion Is Healthcare, Womens Rights

Land represents continuity—connecting us through time and defining space in terms of generational change. In the United States, historical discriminatory housing practices and wealth disparity have profoundly shaped present-day land politics. Juried by Donna R. Charging, this exhibition explores these dynamics while considering environmental concerns and personal histories as they relate to land.

Exhibition Description:

Maps, as visual tools, reveal how artificial boundaries have carved and influenced our understanding of land, yet they fail to capture the depth of individual human experiences. How can artistic practices in various mediums highlight these stories? How might we challenge the borders and boundaries that maps impose?

“Under All is the Land” seeks to illuminate the provisional, the transitional, and the liminal. We are particularly interested in works that engage with the intersection of environmental, social, and historical narratives tied to land. Artists must address the theme of this exhibition in their work and in their artist statement.

The phrase “Under All is the Land” originates from the preamble of the Code of Ethics by the National Association of REALTORS®, emphasizing land as a foundation for life and human connection. 

About the Juror: Donna R. Charging is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara). Her mother is Eastern Shoshone. Donna grew up on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming and lives in Pittsburgh, PA. She has a BFA in Studio Arts from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has an MFA in Studio Art and Design at the University of Louisville. Donna is a Visiting Lecturer of Drawing and Painting at the University of Pittsburgh. For more information visit Donna's website: https://www.donnacharging.com/

The exhibition will be held from April 12 to May 10, 2025 at Woman Made Gallery, 1332 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607.

First Entry Due Date: February 13, 2025, 11:59 PM CST (entry fee: $30) | Final Entry Due Date (fee increases to $35): February 20, 2025, 11:59 PM

Calendar 

Exhibition Dates: April 12 – May 10, 2025 

Opening Reception: Saturday, April 12 from 4 to 7 PM CST 

Artist Walkthrough: Saturday, May 10 from 2 to 4 PM CST 

First Entry Due Date: February 13, 2025, 11:59 PM CST 

Extended Due Date (fee increase to $35): February 23, 2025, 11:59 PM CST 

Notification: February 28, 2025

Entry Fee 

*The entry fee is $30 until the first deadline. The entry fee will then increase to $35 per entry. Each entry requires a minimum of one artwork, though up to three artworks may be considered per submission. Entry fees are non-refundable. 

Members at the Enhanced Artist Level ($100) and above receive one free entry annually. Please email general@womanmade.org to receive your one-time code for free entry redemption. 

WMG offers up to 30 fee waivers per exhibition. To acknowledge the historic inequities of wealth distribution, they are mainly reserved for ALAANA/BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+. If you require a fee waiver simply email us explaining your need and we will assist you. Please email WMG at general@womanmade.org to request a fee-waiver. 

Eligibility Woman Made Gallery is a space for women and nonbinary artists, including trans women and femme/feminine-identifying genderqueer artists. We welcome art from women and non-binary artists from our local community, regionally based, and around the world. 

Due to wall size restrictions, artworks must be no larger than 6’ horizontally and under 75 pounds in weight, unless delivered to and picked up from our gallery by the artist. Artists may be additionally responsible for the installation of oversized works. 

New media artworks are eligible. To be considered, artists must submit a sample .mp4 or URL under 10 mins for purposes of consideration. For exhibition, WMG requires a digital transfer (Google Drive, Vimeo downloads, WeTransfer) as well as a USB formatted in .mp4 file format delivered to the gallery. WMG can provide a limited number of screens and projectors with basic speakers. All other new media needs are the responsibility of the artist. 

Art Sales Accepted work may be listed for sale or be not for sale (NFS). WMG will retain a 40% commission on sold works. Work remains the property of the artist until sold. Sold artworks shall remain in the exhibition until the end of the exhibition. Artists will be paid no later than 30 days after the close of the exhibit. Artists may donate any portion of their commission to WMG. 

Terms of Exhibition An artist contract with full terms of the exhibition will be administered at the time of acceptance notification. Artists need to retrieve their work by the date noted in the artist contract or make alternate arrangements. WMG is unable to store work beyond the pick-up date. Artists may donate their art to WMG's fundraising efforts if unable to pick it up. WMG is happy to talk through preparations, offer advice, and recommend resources as requested.

This Open Call invites submissions for an exhibition exploring how women and non-binary artists use photography to engage with the pressing issues of our time. The exhibition seeks to highlight how the photographic medium—whether central or complementary to an artist's practice—can be used to confront, question, and navigate contemporary socio-political challenges, innovative processes, and evolving technologies. Artists are encouraged to reflect on the critical dynamics of this moment, exploring photography’s role in shaping and responding to urgent global and personal narratives. Photography Now is open to artists who incorporate photography into their work, even if it is not their primary medium. All submitted works must have been created within the last two years to ensure they reflect the timeliness of these conversations.
 

About the Juror: Whitney Bradshaw is an artist, activist, educator, curator, and former social worker living in Chicago. Her work has been shown widely across the United States including solo shows at Atlanta Contemporary, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), the DePaul Art Museum, Villanova University Gallery, the Tarble Arts Center at EIU, the Epiphany Center for the Arts, Wave Pool Contemporary Art Fulfillment Center, Photographic Center Northwest and more. The Museum of Contemporary Photography, the DePaul Art Museum, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Agnes Scott College, the Hall Art and Technology Foundation and Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell collect her work which has been published in Ms. Magazine, GIRLS Magazine, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the BRIDGE Journal and Vogue. In the Fall of 2023, Bradshaw was named one of NewCity Magazine’s top 50 Chicago Artists’ Artists. Both she and OUTCRY are the subject of a documentary film titled OUTCRY: Alchemists of Rage directed by Clare Major which premiered at the Frameline Film Festival in June 2024 and was shortlisted for Best Short Film by the International Documentary Association in 2024. Now curator at the Lubeznik Center for the Arts, she was previously the chair of the visual art conservatory at ChiArts, an adjunct professor at Columbia College Chicago, and curator of the renowned LaSalle Bank Photography Collection, later Bank of America.

The exhibition will be held from May 24 to June 21, 2025 at Woman Made Gallery, 1332 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607.

First Entry Due Date: March 21 | 11:59 PM CST (entry fee: $30) 

Final Entry Due Date (fee increases to $35): March 28 | 11:59 PM CST

Calendar 

Exhibition Dates: May 24 - June 21, 2025 

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 24 from 4 to 7 PM CST 

Artist Walkthrough: Saturday, June 21 from 2 to 4 PM CST 

First Entry Due Date: March 21 | 11:59 PM CST 

Extended Due Date (fee increase to $35): March 28 | 11:59 PM CST

Notification: April 11, 2025

Entry Fee 

*The entry fee is $30 until the first deadline. The entry fee will then increase to $35 per entry. Each entry requires a minimum of one artwork, though up to three artworks may be considered per submission. Entry fees are non-refundable. 

Members at the Enhanced Artist Level ($100) and above receive one free entry annually. Please email general@womanmade.org to receive your one-time code for free entry redemption. 

WMG offers up to 30 fee waivers per exhibition. To acknowledge the historic inequities of wealth distribution, they are mainly reserved for ALAANA/BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+. If you require a fee waiver simply email us explaining your need and we will assist you. Please email WMG at general@womanmade.org to request a fee-waiver. 

Eligibility Woman Made Gallery is a space for women and nonbinary artists, including trans women and femme/feminine-identifying genderqueer artists. We welcome art from women and non-binary artists from our local community, regionally based, and around the world. 

Due to wall size restrictions, artworks must be no larger than 6’ horizontally and under 75 pounds in weight, unless delivered to and picked up from our gallery by the artist. Artists may be additionally responsible for the installation of oversized works. 

New media artworks are eligible. To be considered, artists must submit a sample .mp4 or URL under 10 mins for purposes of consideration. For exhibition, WMG requires a digital transfer (Google Drive, Vimeo downloads, WeTransfer) as well as a USB formatted in .mp4 file format delivered to the gallery. WMG can provide a limited number of screens and projectors with basic speakers. All other new media needs are the responsibility of the artist. 

Art Sales Accepted work may be listed for sale or be not for sale (NFS). WMG will retain a 40% commission on sold works. Work remains the property of the artist until sold. Sold artworks shall remain in the exhibition until the end of the exhibition. Artists will be paid no later than 30 days after the close of the exhibit. Artists may donate any portion of their commission to WMG. 

Terms of Exhibition An artist contract with full terms of the exhibition will be administered at the time of acceptance notification. Artists need to retrieve their work by the date noted in the artist contract or make alternate arrangements. WMG is unable to store work beyond the pick-up date. Artists may donate their art to WMG's fundraising efforts if unable to pick it up. WMG is happy to talk through preparations, offer advice, and recommend resources as requested.

The Ways We Care

Cultivating, tending, tracking, nurturing, repairing, and maintaining. All are words and actions that conjure the love and attention – and the worries and struggles – that go into care, whether for ourselves, others, our families, and our communities. 

Building from a rich feminist art history centered around a politics of care (e.g. Wages for Housework, Maintenance Art, and Mother Art, c. 1970s), this exhibition defines care expansively while taking it as the base of our collective life. From child rearing to mobilizing a grassroots social movement, to care for someone or something is to imagine and invest in the present for the sake of a better future, however big or banal.

This exhibition also recognizes the gendered, ableist, classed, and racialized terms of care, and the often-invisible nature of care work as work. As such, this exhibition gives space to see and explore different experiences and interpretations of care, including but not limited to reproductive labor, affective labor, domestic work, care work, and/or any facet of social, political, cultural, and ecological caretaking.

Exhibition Description:

This exhibition, "Acts of Care: Nurturing the Present, Shaping the Future" is open to women and non-binary artists, including transgender women and femme/feminine-identifying genderqueer artists. 

Please submit images of up three works in all mediums that include a visual element and have not been previously exhibited at WMG. Artists must address the theme of this exhibition in their work and in their artist statement.

About the Juror: Kristen Carter is an assistant professor of art history at Florida Southern College. She holds a PhD in modern and contemporary art from the University of British Columbia and a BA in art history from DePaul University. Her research concerns different modes of relationality, care, and institutional critique with an emphasis on artistic praxis and pedagogy in the 1960s and 1970s. She has presented and published on a range of topics, including performance, body art, and dance, histories of art and pedagogy in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, and the changing relationship between art and politics. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the University of British Columbia and the Getty Research Institute. 

Committed to collaborative and inclusive pedagogy, Carter serves on the College Art Association’s Education Committee, advocating for undergraduate research and innovative teaching.

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The exhibition will be held from July 12 to August 16, 2025 at Woman Made Gallery, 1332 S. Halsted St., Chicago, IL 60607.

First Entry Due Date: May 14, 2025, 11:59 PM CST | Final Entry Due Date: May 21, 2025, 11:59 PM | Entry Fee: $35

Calendar 

Exhibition Dates: July 12 – August 16, 2025 

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 12 from 4 to 7 PM CST 

Artist Walkthrough: Saturday, August 16 from 2 to 4 PM CST 

First Entry Due Date: May 14, 2025, 11:59 PM CST 

Extended Due Date : May 21, 2025, 11:59 PM CST 

Notification: May 30, 2025

Entry Fee 

The entry fee is $35. Each entry requires a minimum of one artwork, though up to three artworks may be considered per submission. Entry fees are non-refundable. 

Members at the Enhanced Artist Level ($100) and above receive one free entry annually. Please email general@womanmade.org to receive your one-time code for free entry redemption. 

WMG offers up to 30 fee waivers per exhibition. To acknowledge the historic inequities of wealth distribution, they are mainly reserved for ALAANA/BIPOC and/or LGBTQIA+. If you require a fee waiver simply email us explaining your need and we will assist you. Please email WMG at general@womanmade.org to request a fee-waiver. 

Eligibility Woman Made Gallery is a space for women and nonbinary artists, including trans women and femme/feminine-identifying genderqueer artists. We welcome art from women and non-binary artists from our local community, regionally based, and around the world. 

Due to wall size restrictions, artworks must be no larger than 6’ horizontally and under 75 pounds in weight, unless delivered to and picked up from our gallery by the artist. Artists may be additionally responsible for the installation of oversized works. 

New media artworks are eligible. To be considered, artists must submit a sample .mp4 or URL under 10 mins for purposes of consideration. For exhibition, WMG requires a digital transfer (Google Drive, Vimeo downloads, WeTransfer) as well as a USB formatted in .mp4 file format delivered to the gallery. WMG can provide a limited number of screens and projectors with basic speakers. All other new media needs are the responsibility of the artist. 

Art Sales Accepted work may be listed for sale or be not for sale (NFS). WMG will retain a 40% commission on sold works. Work remains the property of the artist until sold. Sold artworks shall remain in the exhibition until the end of the exhibition. Artists will be paid no later than 30 days after the close of the exhibit. Artists may donate any portion of their commission to WMG. 

Terms of Exhibition An artist contract with full terms of the exhibition will be administered at the time of acceptance notification. Artists need to retrieve their work by the date noted in the artist contract or make alternate arrangements. WMG is unable to store work beyond the pick-up date. Artists may donate their art to WMG's fundraising efforts if unable to pick it up. WMG is happy to talk through preparations, offer advice, and recommend resources as requested.